National Industrial Exhibition And National Consciousness In Modern Japan

The formation of national consciousness is not a superposition of mutationalevents, but rather a slow, gradual process of dynamic development. The NationalIndustrial Exhibitions reflect this dynamic process from a side precisely.Japan is a latecomer capitalist country, and its modernization is the result ofinteraction of various factors at home and abroad."Perry Expedition" opened thedoor of Japan.Then Japan began to consider this as an opportunity to see theworld.And through the Meiji Restoration the Japan walked up the road ofmodernization step by step.This thesis consists of an introduction, body, conclusion of three parts. Bodypart is divided into four chapters:Chapter2analyzes the background of Industrial Exhibitions held in Meijiperiod,including Modern Japan similar exhibitions and fairs,Japanese earlyinvolvements of the World Expo and the policy of early Meiji government to supportfor fair activities.Chapter3discusses the processes of the previous five Industrial Exhibitionsheld in the Meiji period and their special significances.Through sorting out thedevelopment skeleton of the Industrial Exhibitions in the Japanese history,the essayhelps us form an intuitive and systematic understanding of the Industrial Exhibitionsdevelopment.Chapter4explores the formation and development of the two elements inJapanese modern national consciousness from the side of Industrial Exhibitions,which includes the sense of the people’s belongs to the country and their sense ofsubjective rights. The sense of the people’s belongs to the country is vested in the "other" comparative perspective to form a " world view " and a " Japanese view",while continuing to infiltrate the people the idea of "living God is the Emperor,"and trying to establish authority of the Emperor. The sense of subjective rightsformed with the development of Industrial Exhibitions, which embodied in theliberal economic development, the public diffusion, the carrying forward of thefreedom spirit and so on.Chapter5expounds the distortion of the Japanese national consciousnessdevelopment, which consists of changes in the public attitudes to the IndustrialExhibitions and the exploration of distortion from two parts.This chapter focuses onsome new changes reflected from the Fifth Industrial Exhibition of1903, especiallythe " academic human Hall affair ",from which we can understand the perspective ofJapanese imperialism’s political ambitions to beautify their aggressions and colonialdomination,thus strengthening the national identity of the empire to make the publicbecome accomplices of imperialist expansionism.